Tag: TU Top 100

Yak Attack!

By TB

While we were in Oregon, we were told that the Yakima River was simply like the Deschutes… a mirror image, just on the Washington side of the Columbia River.   What we found was “Not Exactly”.  While we still felt the “high desert” climate and saw similar sights, we found the rivers to be quite different.  No “Redsides” in the Yakima.  A river that isn’t as wild and woolly as the Deschutes.  You can fish from the boat on the Yakima, where on the Deschutes, you float from spot to spot, but have to wade to fish.  So overall, for us at least, it was different.

We floated the river with Jeremy Miller of Mitchell’s Evening Hatch in Ellensburg, WA.  It was a tough day on the water in terms of “catching”, but the fishing, as always, was great.  We “attacked” the Yak with everything we had in the fly box.  We hooked into a few good fish, landed a few, but not as many as Jeremy would have liked.  It’s always true with good guides, they actually are more determined for us to catch fish than we are.   What we found that day, was that we actually had a better day than other boats on the water.

When we left for the day, Jeremy left a dry/dropper rig on my rod.  The next day, we went out and Barb, using my rod and Jeremy’s rig, caught a nice 16+” rainbow on a prince nymph with rubber legs that Jeremy had tied himself.  Needless to say, we sent our thanks to Jeremy.

Please enjoy the interview we did with Jeremy on the banks of the Yakima River.

Spring creeks are the most difficult to fish for many reasons… crystal clear waters, strong micro-currents, matching the exact size fly, etc…   The best I’ve heard is that the fish have a Masters degree (or Ph.D.) in how NOT to get caught.   Hence, you often get “schooled” when you fish a spring creek.   Well… while we didn’t get “skunked” on Silver Creek, we certainly got schooled.  When you put on a size 20 PMD and the fish want something even smaller, they won’t bite.  When your 7x fly line gets caught by the many micro-currents making your fly float funny, the fish ignore it.  Make a noise wading near a fish, forget it.

Luckily for Barb and I, we had Carl Evenson of Silver Creek Outfitters showing us around the Silver Creek Preserve which is run by The Nature Conservancy.   Carl knew which kind and size of flies seemed to be on the water.  He took us to where fish were rising or hanging out.  It was up to us to deal with the currents which were going every which way, but, we did and we had a great day fishing.

Carl was full of knowledge about fishing Silver Creek as well as the history of the area.  We hiked and fished over 4 miles along the Creek, stumbling upon a huge bull moose and seeing some huge trout.  We even caught a few, even though they weren’t the humongous ones.

In this “guide talk”, Carl shares his story as well as the story of Silver Creek including its iconic hatches.  We hope you enjoy this interview as much as we enjoyed our time on the water with Carl.